Heading into the postseason hot

The Walpole High girls lacrosse team closes out the regular season winning six of seven, including 14-12 to Natick on Monday.

Keith Pearson kpearson@wickedlocal.com

The Walpole High girls lacrosse team heads into the postseason having won six of its last seven after beating Natick 14-12 in a nonleague game on Monday and 19-8 over Norwood last Thursday.The Rebels take a 15-3 record in the tournament and will learn their draw Thursday. This year will have a new look to it as Walpole was moved to Division 2 East, which includes schools from Belmont to Dartmouth."We would like to make a run of course. We are playing well and I think the girls have set themselves up to do some damage," said Rebels coach Mike Tosone.As far as the top teams in the newly formed section, Tosone labeled Medfield a contender "for sure" and that Wayland "is another tough out." Medfield (15-2) was runner-up of the Tri-Valley League and was scheduled to play Wayland (12-4-1) in a nonleague game yesterday.Unlike most sports, which use winning percentage to determine seeding, lacrosse uses a power ranking to determine the bracket. Other teams with solid record that figure to be among the top seeds include Dartmouth (16-2), Foxboro (14-4) and Watertown (13-3).While the win over Natick in the final game of the regular season did not count as a league game, it still showed the improvement of the squad as the Redhawks took the league encounter, 12-6, in the season opener on April 3 and went on to win the Herget Division, finishing 9-1-1 in league play. Both teams lost to Needham while Walpole had a loss to Framingham and Natick tied Wellesley.The offense was paced by Molly Lanahan's six goals. Meg Sundstrom had five points with three goals and two assists and Bri Doherty scored three times. Alison Foley and Hannah Nadeau each added single tallies.Goaltender Erin LeBlanc backstopped a defensive effort led by Michele Lucas."In every phase of the game we are simply a better team than first time we met them," Tosone said. "The single biggest area of improvement would be how well we cleared the ball against their high pressure ride. That was a huge struggle first time around, handled it real well (Monday night)."The Rebels closed out the Bay State Conference season at 8-3, good for second place behind Natick, following a 19-8 win over Norwood last Wednesday in a solid team effort on Senior Night.Doherty and Lanahan each scored five times while Foley added four goals and Sundstrom netted three.